The Remaining Supreme Court Cases

After this morning there are 6 cases left on the Supreme Court Docket for the 2012-2013 Term. These are (in the order that they were argued)

1) Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District – A “Takings” case in regard to a denial of a Development Permit. Probably a win for the Water Management District. Scalia was heavily involved with the decisions that Koontz’s Lawyer was trying to use as Precedent and didn’t seem to accept his arguments.

2) Shelby County v. Holder – Voting Rights acts Pre-clearance, whether Congress exceeded its authority in the reauthorization. May swing on the question of whether the original passage was constitutional since the re-authorization didn’t change the bill. Probably a win for Shelby County and we’ll see if anything is left of the VRA section 5 when the court gets finished.

3) US vs. Windsor – Given DOMA, when one member of a SSM (married in Canada, accepted by New York where they were living) died, the federal government treated inheritance as if they weren’t married. This one actually has standing issues since Windsor won at the appeals level and then appealed to the Supreme court anyway. Normal would be to accept the win and the Supremes would only get involved if another Appeals Court ruled in the opposite way. Not unheard of though. This one just depends on Kennedy.

4) Hollingsworth v. Perry – The Prop 8 case. Court watchers have come up with at least 7 different theoretical ways they could rule ranging from Prop 8 stands to SSM legalized across the country. Standing is also key in this case. Theoretically the court could rule that the two couples that originally sued could be the only ones for whom this is a win and California goes from the X SSM couples prior to Prop 8 to X + 2. Most likely is probably some odd combination of rulings that leaves the 9th Circuit appeals court decision (which will restart SSM in California) intact due to the need for 5 Justices to agree on knocking it down.

5) Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl – Whether a unmarried father who has claimed no state level rights and who is a member of a recognized tribe (mother is not) can use the Indian Child Welfare Act to block an adoption of the child by the couple who have cared for her since birth. May end up 5-4 with a cross-political alignment majority.

6) Sekhar v. United States – Whether a recommendation of an Attorney can be viewed as Property for the purposes of the Hobbs Act. Probably hasn’t been decided because it was almost the last one to be argued. Sekhar will probably win.